Читать книгу The Silent Pool - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 8

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“That is the very last one of Stella.” Star held out a large photograph in a folding leather case. “You haven’t seen her for simply years, and of course she’s changed.”

The picture showed a thin, leggy child with straight dark hair cut in a fringe and a face which had lost its baby roundness and was developing features not yet adjusted to each other. The nose had more of a bridge than is usual at six years old. The brows were straight and dark above deep-set eyes. The mouth was wide and rather shapeless.

“She isn’t a bit like me,” said Star regretfully.

“No.”

“Or Robin. He was terribly good-looking, wasn’t he? And of course Stella may be—you never can tell, can you? But it will be in her own sort of way, not ours. She has got wonderful eyes—a sort of mixture of brown and grey, much darker than mine. Janet, you will write me every single thing she says and does, won’t you? I’m a fool about her—everyone tells me I am—but that’s the way it is. Someone said to me the other day, why didn’t I have her with me instead of leaving her down at Ford House? I nearly scratched her eyes out, and I said, ‘Oh, it would be a bit of a tie, you know’.” Tears rushed into her eyes. “It isn’t that—I don’t care about anyone else, but I want you to know how it is. I never stop missing her—I don’t honestly. But it’s better for her to be down there in the country. She’s got rabbits, and a kitten, and children do get something out of being in the country that you can’t give them in town. Do you remember us at Darnach? It was heaven, wasn’t it!”

Janet laid the photograph down upon the bed. There was an open suit-case before her, and she was packing it with Star’s filmy underclothes. She had known perfectly well that Star would have been relying on her to do the packing. The mention of Darnach might have been without any special intent, or it might not. She was to know in a moment, because Star said,

“You don’t ever see Ninian now, do you?”

Janet was folding a pale blue negligée. She laid it in the suit-case and said,

“No.”

Star brought her over an armful of stockings.

“Well, I can’t see why not. I ran into Robin the other day, and we had lunch. I really didn’t mind—much. And Robin and I were married, whereas you weren’t even properly engaged to Ninian. Or were you?”

Janet distributed the stockings.

“It depends on what you call properly.”

“Well—you didn’t have a ring.”

“No, I didn’t have a ring.”

There was a little pause before Star said,

“Did you break it off, or did he? I asked him, and he wouldn’t tell me—just cocked up one eyebrow and said it wasn’t my business.”

Janet said, “No.”

“Because if it was on account of Anne Forester—was it?”

“She was what you might call a contributory cause.”

“Darling, how stupid! He didn’t care for her—not the least bit in the world! It was just a flare-up! Don’t you ever have a pash yourself and get over it? I have dozens! I see a too utterly expensive hat and feel as if I should die if I didn’t have it, or a mink I can’t possibly afford, or anything like that, and after a little it wears off and I don’t give a damn! Anne Forester was like that. He couldn’t possibly have afforded her, and she would have bored him stiff in a week. You see, I do know Ninian. We may be only first cousins, but in a way we’re much more like twins, as our fathers were. It’s something quite special. So I know what it was about Anne. And there’s another reason why I know—because of what happened with Robin and me. We just had a pash for each other, and we got married on it and crashed. There wasn’t anything there really—not for either of us. Only I can’t be sorry about it, because I’ve got Stella, and she is real—I’ve got Stella. Now, with you and Ninian there is something real. He matters to you, and you matter to him—you always did, and you always will.”

Janet had been bending forward over the suit-case. Her hands went on putting things into it, folding them carefully, laying them straight. She was a little taller than Star, but not much. And she was penny-plain to Star’s twopence coloured—an agreeable shade of brown hair and eyes that matched it, eyebrows and lashes a little darker—a face with nothing striking about it except that the chin gave the impression that she would be able to make up her mind and stick to it, and the eyes had a straight and friendly look. Star had once said, “You know, darling, you’ll go on getting more attractive all the time, because the niceness will go on coming through.” She watched her now and wished that Janet would speak. She never would about Ninian, and it was stupid. Things you don’t talk about lie in the dark and fester. You want to get them out into the light, even if you have to drag them. But when Janet straightened up and turned round, all she said was,

“There—that’s done. And you’d better not touch it, except to put one or two last things in on the top. Now, what else is there to do?”

“Well, we haven’t settled anything about the business side yet.”

Janet frowned.

“There wouldn’t be any business side, only Hugo forgot to sign my cheque, and as he is probably well off the map by now, there is no saying when I can get hold of him. You can lend me ten pounds.”

“Darling, you can’t live on ten pounds!”

Janet laughed.

“You don’t know what you can do till you try. Only this time I’m not trying. I shall have a fortnight nice and free in Ford House, and I’ve got something in the savings bank. With your ten pounds, I shall get through, even if Hugo doesn’t communicate—and he probably will, because he’ll want to know if there’s anything about his play. I ought to be going.”

Star put out a hand and caught at her.

“Not yet. I always feel safe when you are somewhere about. I don’t mean with me, but when I know I can just ring you up and say come along and you’ll come, like I did tonight. And when I think of being right over on the other side of the Atlantic I get a horrid kind of shivery feeling, as if there was a lump of ice right down inside me and it wouldn’t melt. You don’t think it could be a presentiment, do you?”

“How could it!”

Star said weakly,

“I don’t know—nobody does. But people have them. One of my Rutherford great-aunts had one. She was going on a pleasure trip, I don’t remember where, and just as she was going to step on board she had a most dreadful cold feeling and she couldn’t do it. So she didn’t. And everyone else was drowned. That was her portrait in Uncle Archie’s study, in a little lace cap and one of those Victorian shawls. She married an astronomer, and they went to live in the south of England. So it just goes to show, doesn’t it?”

Janet let this go by. She had known Star for so many years that she did not expect her to be logical. She said cheerfully,

“Well, you needn’t go if you don’t want to—need you? You can always send Jimmy Du Parc a cable to tell him you’ve got cold feet and he can give Jean Pomeroy your part. It’s perfectly simple.”

Star pinched hard.

“I’d rather die!” she said. “And you don’t believe in presentiments, do you?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that you can’t have it both ways. If you want this part you’ll have to go to New York for it. It isn’t going to come to you.”

“It’s a marvellous part! I should be right on the top of my own particular wave! Janet, I’ve got to do it! And as long as you are with Stella I shall know that it’ll be perfectly all right. You do think it will be all right, don’t you?”

“I can’t see why not.”

“No—I’m just being silly. I do hate going on journeys. Not when I’m actually doing them—that’s rather fun—but the night before. It’s like looking from a nice bright lighted room and not wanting to go out into the dark.”

Janet laughed.

“You are not very likely to find it dark in New York!” she said.

When she had gone, Star picked up the telephone receiver and dialled quickly. The voice that answered was as familiar to her as her own.

“Ninian—it’s Star.”

“It would be!”

“I’ve rung you up three times, and you’ve always been out!”

“I do go out!”

“Ninian, I’ve just had Janet here——”

“Epoch-making intelligence!”

“That idiot Edna has let Nanny go off on holiday somewhere on the continent.”

“That bourne from which no traveller returns!”

“Oh, she’ll return all right, but not for a fortnight—and I’m off to New York.”

“I know you are. I’m coming to see you off.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for Janet. I couldn’t go away and leave Stella without somebody.”

“Well, I should have said Ford House was rather overstocked with women.”

“I wouldn’t leave Stella with one of them! What I rang up to say was that Janet is going down to look after her.”

There was something of a pause. Then Ninian Rutherford said,

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why ring me up?”

“I thought you might like to know.”

He said in his most charming voice,

“Darling, I don’t give a damn, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Star gave an exasperated sigh and hung up.